Wealth managers renew call for access to best share class deals

Wealth managers are urging fund providers to open preferentially-priced share classes to their businesses, as opposed to just the largest, typically platform-based distributors.

Super clean share classes, though not as widespread as first envisaged when clean pricing was introduced on platforms last year, are the cheapest available in the market. They are mainly offered through fund providers’ deals with major distributors such as Hargreaves Lansdown, but wealth managers have called for groups to "meet them in the middle". Providers currently impose large minimum investments on the share classes, to restrict access to the largest investors only. This means smaller wealth managers are obliged to buy funds at the same rate as the wider retail market, despite...